iRedux is an automated system that, by destroying your audio files, creates original ambient music. The idea behind the project was to create a piece of software art, for installation, performance or user-distribution, that would inspire discussion surrounding ownership, file-sharing and copyright. The Mac application, currently in development, will allow you to take ownership of your entire digital music library in three automated steps:
1. Drag and drop music straight from your favourite music player, straight in to the iRedux Application.
2. iRedux will then begin processing the audio, destroying, rebuilding and re-appropriating the copyrighted music.
3. Note that iRedux will destroy the original audio files: you’re trading something you licensed from a label, for something you really own.
Through a combination of pre-set digital signal processes and aleatoric remixing, iRedux generates unique and original music, utilising the compositions of other composers. iRedux will re-appropriate an album, chewing up old music and giving birth to new sounds – using the original album as inspiration whilst simultaneously corrupting and destroying it.
As the app is still in private beta we haven’t had a chance to have a play yet but we’ll post as soon as the app is available for download. In the meantime, have a look at this in-depth overview of iRedux and the surrounding discussion: download here.
iRedux was created by sound artist Oliver Farshi, and the mini-album is a collaboration between him and Geraldine Juárez for Kanye Webst Week at F.A.T. Lab.
Oliver Farshi is a composer and sound artist. Oliver’s sound art explores the shifting boundaries between the physical and the digital, examining notions of digital ownership, virtual and real space, and electronically-mediated intimacy.
